Contemporary & Global Art

Ouline of Oral Presentation on Bruce Nauman

Bibliography:
- Art 21
- The Art Story
       - Comfortable? Easy? Not for Bruce Nauman. (New York Times Art Review)
       - Listen: Can You Hear the Space? (New York Times Article)
- Khan Academy
- Guggenheim Museum
- Phildelphia Museum of Art

Style:
- Installation Art
- Video Art
- Sculptures
- Performance Art
- Photography Art
- Neon Art

Influences:
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Process Art
- Minimalism
- Man Ray

Common Ideas and Themes:
- Readymade objects
- Crude Finished Product
- Language (and how it can fail)
- Post-Minimalism
- Neon

Important Artworks
- The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths
- South American Triangle
- One Hundred Live and Die
- Mapping the Studio
- Setting a Good Corner

Postwar Modern Movements

Eleanor Antin is an artist that creates films, drawings, photographs, installations, and performances. Many of her works feature history as a means to critique the present. An example of this is Antin's photo series "The Last Days of Pompeii" which draws parallels between the people of the ancient Roman Empire and Americans. She also uses humor in many of her artworks. She felt that art, and life in general, is much more rewarding if can trigger emotions and still make you laugh.

Between World Wars

The Dada movement started after World War I as a protest to the horrors many artists endured. Dadaists mocked Western society with absurd art that ignored traditional artistic values. Marcel Duchamp was a Dadaist that used everyday objects, known as readymades, that wouldn't normally be considered art. One such artwork was In Advanced of the Broken Arm (pictured above). Duchamp signed a snow shovel and called it art. This challenges the idea that art something that has to be made by the artist. It also challenged the idea that art has to be aesthetically pleasing.

Jacob Lawrence is considered the most important African American artist of the 1900s. He spent his teenage years in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. Lawrence often depicted African Americans, such as his Migration Series. He called his style "dynamic cubism". His influences include the discrimination that blacks experienced, poverty, crime, and his hopes for his community.